Varsity autonomy: Right, not a reward

The University Grants Commission’s draft norms for foreign universities to set up campuses in India follow our time-honoured tradition of Atithi Devo Bhava. Whenever this country opens up its markets to foreign entities, be it retail or insurance, it bends over backwards to make them comfortable and waits on them. Generous regulatory concessions and exemptions are given, often topped up with a get-out-of-jail free card. Of course, that’s the nature of foreign investment. It’s a demanding beast; it expects to be appeased.

The UGC’s draft norms, which are open to debate until the end of this month, make it clear that incoming foreign universities will be able to design their own academic processes and programmes, appoint faculty unencumbered by Indian stipulations, set their own fee structure and repatriate funds to their parent campuses. As UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said at his press conference announcing the norms, “Such universities will be given a special dispensation regarding regulatory, governance and content norms.” There’s a simple word for all of that: autonomy. In fact, the only house rule the foreign universities are expected to obey relates to the BJP-led Union government’s pet project, national interest. The institutions must “not offer any such programme of study which jeopardises the national interest of India or the standards of higher education in India.” While ‘the national interest’ will obviously be subject to the discretion of the government, it’s curious to learn that ‘the standards of higher education in India’, such as they are, need protection from Top 500 ranked foreign universities.

This is not a quibble over the wisdom or otherwise of making higher education a marketplace where India’s elites will buy expensive degrees and trade them for places of privilege. That horse bolted a long time ago. Much of higher education, especially technical education, has been privatised already. Dozens of private universities cater to the premium segment, offering overpriced diplomas with dubious value in the job market.

Forget that the UGC’s attempt to paint this as some kind of an Aatma Nirbhar initiative in the field of higher education is no more than a ruse. Indeed, half a million Indians head to foreign campuses every year, remitting $30 billion of foreign exchange abroad under RBI’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme. But it can hardly be argued that allowing foreign universities to open campuses in India will keep those dollars within the country. Not with them free to wire the money to their parent campuses.

Two questions arise from UGC’s eagerness to welcome foreign universities with complete, unfettered academic, administrative and financial autonomy. Why won’t they extend the same courtesies to Indian institutions, both state and private? And why, in all this eagerness for Indian Made Foreign Education, is there no attention paid to the need to raise standards in state institutions?

Autonomy is held out as an inducement to bring in foreign universities, ostensibly to raise standards of higher education, while it is denied to Indian universities in letter as well as spirit. Why are only privileged sections given access to academic freedom while state institutions suffer incursions into every aspect of their functioning?

Foreign universities are welcome provided Indian institutions are allowed the same academic freedoms to subject our society to probing inquiry. If not, we perpetuate the same divergence between the people and the privileged.